Off to the patch to check on my vegetable-growing golems!
What, they're a bit small? They're vegetable growing rock dudes aren't they?
That's quite the haul! I don't know how they do it. We've got a whole savoy cabbage, some small potatoes, onions, radishes (i couldnt find turnips), and some grocery store carrots AND small carrots w/greens from my herb garden! And some basilisk bacon.
This isn't smoked bacon its just raw basilisk belly so im going to grill them for a bit before I stew them. Cooking them in simple seasoning instead of a thick bbq glaze feels so wrong... but ill allow myself to brush them with some oil and use a more interesting season mix then, which has salt, pepper, and a bit of lemon zest and garlic too.
I'll just use a quarter of this then, and im cutting out the solid core because I'm already a bit cabbage-sensitive.
Chopping the potatoes and onion into largeish chunks.
And most of the big carrots, though ill save the thinnest bits to use in the side salad.
And they just go in a big stewing pot with a good amount of water, and some simple salt & pepper seasoning. That's it! Not even a stock cube..
While the meat is grilling and the veg are stewing, we make a little side salad. Here's the leaves and the tiny little carrots... they might not be very ripe, they taste more bitter than the store ones. I'll just bin the middle stalks, this is crunchy enough.
Then the chopped up radishes, see, if you ask me they make even more sense for the salad than a massive turnip. This is supposedly dressed with just olive oil... but thats a bit.. eh... i really want to use a bit of vinegar for an extra kick, and im using a mix of olive oil and lavender infused oil.
stir that up, and it looks pretty good!
Now that the meat is cooked enough, I can throw it in the pot and hope it still infuses the stew with a bit of porky broth flavour. I just didn't really want to fully cook it from raw this way, I dunno. Gotta play it safe right? The meat and the veg have both had a good 30 mins to cook on their own and an extra 10 mins simmering together. The water in the stew has started to look a nice translucent beige which is a good sign.
I'm pretty biased against plain simple foods and vegetable soups... but... I gotta admit this is really quite good. The broth has a wonderful flavour, it'll be right up your street if you like steamed broccoli and/or pork ramen. The range of textures and flavours from the different vegetables is very pleasing... it tastes so cleansing and hydrating. The side salad adds a wonderful crunch with the carrot greens, but I would have much preferred a different dressing - like honey mustard or ranch or something. I didn't much like the basic oil dressing on bitter vegetables.
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